Marketing Spark (The B2B SaaS Marketing Podcast)

Chris Walker’s on fire. He’s a high-profile B2B marketing thought leader. His LinkedIn posts generate huge engagement. His agency, Refine Labs, is red-hot. But here’s the interesting thing:  Not that long ago, Chris wasn’t the belle of the B2B ball. Many of his ideas about B2B marketing were dismissed. Hard to believe, right? On the Marketing Spark podcast, Chris said: “For the first five to seven years of my career, everyone thought my marketing ideas were not smart, and they didn’t want me to do the things that I was doing like podcasts.  They were heavily scrutinized at all the companies that I worked for.” Chris’ frustration and appetite to do the marketing he wanted led to the creation of Refine Labs. 

Hiring a marketing leader is not just about someone's skills and experience but creating a partnership between the CEO and the head of marketing. Avoma CEO Aditya Kothadiya provides first-hand insight into the process that he recently took to hire a director of marketing. Aditya says one of the keys to success is hiring the right person based on a company's growth stage.  Once a marketing leader comes on board, Aditya said it is important to align around expectations and goals so the rules of engagement are established.

As much as many people have seen significant ROI from LinkedIn (connections, conversations, and leads), I'm beginning to see some people explore other social media platforms. It could be that LinkedIn is getting busier and/or that people see potential to make connections on places like Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram. To get an insider's view of the landscape, I talked with Marcus Schaller, who recently shifted some of his social media time to Twitter.  Most interesting is how Marcus is taking some of the key lessons from LinkedIn and applying them to Twitter.

"LinkedIn is way too slow, too reactive and not pro-active enough ." That's a blunt assessment from Charlie Whyman, a LinkedIn trainer and "marketing momentum builder". In this episode, Charlie and I explore some of the ways that LinkedIn evolved in 2020 and what she expects will happen in 2021. This includes: - Analytics for personal accounts; probably not going to happen. - More use of Stories as conferences and events come back to life. - Improve content discovery tools through the use of tags.  - Better corporate pages Charlie also offers insight into automation tools (they're evil) and how marketers are ruining LinkedIn by using these tools to drive leads and Website traffic.

Marketers love the thrill of the chase. We pursue prospects with reckless abandon. MQLs are B2B digital hunting trophies. But when marketers catch prospects, the game’s over. They quickly forget about these newly-minted customers….because prospects are sexier. It shouldn’t be this way.  Prospects shouldn’t be engaged separately by sales, marketing, and customer success. The three groups should be working together to attract, capture, and serve customers. John McTigue argues that silos create friction, which drives customer unhappiness and churn.  He believes a unified approach is a win for B2B companies and customers. 

Marketing is hard. It's even more challenging when you're the lone marketer. You need to strategize, coordinate, tactically execute, and organize.  In other words, you have to be a multi-task player. On the Marketing Spark podcast, Nancy Kwan talks about life as a solo marketer. One of her biggest pieces of advice: "Don't become a yes person. Be comfortable saying no." Nancy says that solo marketers need to be strategic and ask tough questions before committing to anything.

Personal branding is red-hot. Seemingly, everyone you turn, someone is offering personal branding advice and consulting. Is the focus/obsession with personal branding due to the gig economy, the ubiquity of social marketing, or the reality that people will work for multiple employers so a personal brand is important, if not necessary? On this episode of Marketing Spark, Rich Cardona and I dive into personal branding, why it matters, and how to build a personal brand.  We also discuss the importance of content marketing and why, like many people, his time on Clubhouse has gone way down.

Most business books are dull. I read the first 25 pages before a book loses its appeal. The writing is dense, the topic doesn't warrant a book, or I quickly get the point. Laura Valvasori has developed a new and interesting way for people to get more value from business books.  She recently launched the Business Book Collective, a virtual community that combines a Mastermind group and a book club.  Each month, you read a book and share your thoughts and take-aways with like-minded people.  It's a brilliant concept because you're held accountable to finish the book and you benefit from the collective wisdom of the community. Laura literally stumbled upon the idea a few months ago. But unlike many ideas that come and go, she embraced it and launched in January.

Jay Desai has always wanted to be an entrepreneur. At 11-years-old, he had a newsletter business. In middle school, he was reselling sticks of gum bought at Costco. While working for Trend, a B2B startup last year, Jay came upon a problem: how to collect content from around the Web for future reference. One thing led to another and Jay created Swpely, which he describes as Pinterest for B2B. It's a free service that makes it easy to collect digital content, social media, updates, videos, and photos. In this episode of Marketing Spark, Jay talks about the transition from full-time employee to entrepreneur, and how he plans to grow Swpely into a full-featured content aggregation platform.

Networking still matters. I'm not talking about social networks but establishing connections with people professionally and personally. A lot of things in life happen due to relationships. It's how we develop trust, empathy, and connections. Marc Angelos is a long-time Wall St. salesman who intimately understands the power of value of networking. In this episode of Marketing Spark, Marc takes a deep dive into the keys to success networking and how to make it happen in a digital world.